Killer project: Build your own vortex cannon

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How would you like to have your very own vortex cannon like Tom Cruise in Minority Report? It’s not quite as complicated as you would imagine, albeit not quite as awesome either. Two students from the University of Nottingham filmed the video above as part of University radio show The Science Show. The beginning starts off a bit like a British adaptation of a Lonely Island video, but then the cool stuff happens and plastic cups start flying.

The basic steps to creating a vortex cannon are: cut a circular hole in an otherwise sealed cardboard box, fill said box with smoke followed by simultaneously hitting both sides of the box. Due to the opening being circular as well as narrower than the box itself and it being the smokes only form of escape, so when the box is hit the smoke inside is forced out through the opening… creating a vortex!

It’s not all that powerful, in fact it can just about knock over a tower of plastic cups from 10 meters away. It’s extremely timid compared to the vortex cannon from the BBC’s Bang Goes The Theory which can knock down a “house of bricks” by using explosions to generate the force required, but it’s also a hell of a lot easier to make. See that (video at the bottom.)

If you want to know more about the physics behind the cannon then head over to The Science Show’s website to listen to the podcasts, there’s also a number of other interesting topics that may well be worth a listen too.